


Shake an Egg

by drakkynfyre47



Category: Hogan's Heroes
Genre: Gen, Short Story Speedwriting Challenge 2014
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-27
Updated: 2014-06-27
Packaged: 2018-02-06 09:02:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1852294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drakkynfyre47/pseuds/drakkynfyre47
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Short Story Speedwriting Challenge on Fanfiction.net.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shake an Egg

**Author's Note:**

> The opening line ("Sixteen dozen eggs!") is taken from ML Miller Breedlove's story "A Tisket, A Tasket" on Fanfiction.net.
> 
> And yes, bad puns.

"Sixteen dozen eggs!?" LeBeau exclaimed.  
"Yeah," said Newkirk.  
"What am I supposed to do with sixteen dozen eggs?"  
"That's exactly what Newkirk asked," said Carter. "Except it was more along the lines of 'Blimey, what's Louis s'posed to do with sixteen dozen eggs!?'"  
“Leave the British accents to me, Carter,” Newkirk advised. He turned back to LeBeau. “Actually, you could just give them all to Schultz. That would take care of ‘em right quick.”  
“The only problem with that idea would be that there’s a message in one of them,” Kinch pointed out from where he was seated at the radio. “And we don’t know which one it is.” He removed the headset, setting it down on the table, then moved to stand with the others near the map table.  
“Can I put these down now?” Carter asked plaintively, arms trembling with the effort of carrying eight dozen eggs. Newkirk had wisely deposited his eight dozen on the table as soon as they had returned to Stalag 13.  
“Sure, Carter. Go ahead.” Kinch rubbed his eyes. “We could have an egg fight.”  
“What’s an egg fight?” Newkirk asked. “Is that where you get to throw eggs at people?”  
“No. Well, only when something goes wrong. At home, at Easter, we hardboil eggs, then everybody gets one and you pair up. Then you tap the eggs against each other and whoever’s breaks first is out. Then you find someone else whose egg didn’t break, and you play them, until there’s only one person left with an unbroken egg. Except in this case, it’ll be the porcelain egg that the message is in that’s left unbroken. You don’t do those in England?”  
Newkirk shook his head.  
“Well, my family doesn’t do that either,” Carter countered.  
“You’re off track, Carter. Kinch, that might work, but then we still have to make sure that one of us is the one who gets that egg,” LeBeau pointed out. “If Schultz gets it, or one of the other guards, we’ll be in big trouble.”  
“Who said anything about Schultz?” Kinch’s teeth flashed white in the dark of the tunnel. “He’d just start eating all the ones that cracked.”  
“You’re talking about cooking sixteen dozen eggs and have an egg fight with sixteen dozen prisoners! Do you realize the sheer amount of fuel we’d need to burn to boil all that water?” Newkirk asked incredulously.  
“Why not?” Carter said. “That would be kinda fun.”  
“It would also be utterly impractical,” said Kinch. “For the reasons Newkirk and LeBeau mentioned, but also because it’s not Easter. The Kommandant would be suspicious, even if we could get the colonel to agree to help us out with such a crazy scheme.”  
“Oui,” LeBeau agreed. “I can only cook perhaps a dozen at a time, and that’s using my biggest pot.”  
“Can’t we throw them at Klink and whichever one cracks open ‘is ‘ead instead of cracking open the egg is the one we need?” Newkirk suggested.  
The others laughed. “No matter how appealing that idea is, we can’t do that,” Kinch said with a sigh. “Then we’d need a new Kommandant, and the colonel wouldn’t like that. And then we’d have six months at least in the cooler. And-”  
“I catch your drift,” Newkirk interrupted. Then he flashed a quick grin. “But getting to take potshots at Klink would be worth six months in the cooler.”  
“No it wouldn’t,” said Kinch. “There’s a reason it’s called the cooler, you know.”  
“Yeah, I do know. Sometimes I think I spend as much time in the cooler as I do in the barracks,” Newkirk said.  
“That’s because you’re a troublemaker, Pierre,” LeBeau sniped.  
“And you’ve never been in the cooler?” Newkirk shot back. “I seem to recall something about six weeks?”  
“That was on le Colonel’s orders!”  
“Hold on,” said a new voice.  
“Baker! What are you doing here?” Carter asked, surprised.  
“You should be asleep. I’m the one pulling the all-nighter,” Kinch said.  
“I couldn’t sleep,” Baker admitted. “So I came down to see if you guys were back yet.”  
“We are,” said Carter unnecessarily.  
“I can see that,” Baker said wryly.  
“Why’re we holding on?” Newkirk asked.  
“I have an idea.”  
“Well?” LeBeau demanded. “Let’s hear it, then.”  
“Well,” Baker started, then stopped. “Incidentally, why did you guys get handed sixteen dozen eggs?”  
“We didn’t,” Newkirk said. “We just took them. Paid for them, though,” he added hurriedly when LeBeau and Kinch stared at him.  
“There was only supposed to be a dozen,” said Carter.  
“But Max, the shopkeeper, wasn’t there to tell us which dozen eggs to take,” Newkirk put in. “Must’ve been on break or something.”  
“So we took them all. Just in case,” Carter finished.  
“All sixteen dozen of them,” Kinch said, hiding a grin.  
Carter beamed. “Exactly.”  
LeBeau just rolled his eyes.  
Baker stifled a sigh. “And so you’re trying to figure out which egg is the porcelain one. Out of sixteen dozen.”  
LeBeau nodded. “And we’re not having any luck. All our ideas are very impractical.”  
“Tell me when I get something wrong, Kinch,” Baker said, and then resumed speaking. “Porcelain is like ceramic, as far as that it’s fired in a clay oven. And to prevent it from cracking, the porcelain needs to be a certain thickness, because when it’s exposed to so much heat, it could buckle if it’s not strong enough.  
“So we’ve established that it needs to be thicker than an eggshell. Now, porcelain’s what they make bathtubs and toilets out of, so it’s pretty heavy. Therefore, the porcelain egg with the message should be considerably heavier than the others. Plus something should rattle around inside if you held it up to your ear and shook it,” he finished triumphantly.  
“Wow, Baker. I’m glad you’re here. Otherwise we’d be eating hard boiled eggs till the end of the war!” Carter said.  
“And probably for another couple years after that,” Baker told him.  
“All things considered, I’d rather take potshots at the Kommandant,” Newkirk muttered.  
“So now we’ve gone from having egg fights to lifting eggs like dumbbells,” Kinch said.  
LeBeau put his hands on his hips. “Well, what are we waiting for? We have sixteen dozen eggs to lift!”


End file.
